


Bad Sketch Practices

by Emeka



Category: Life Is Strange 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Codependency, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Incest, M/M, not action, of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-18 23:29:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20647481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emeka/pseuds/Emeka
Summary: Solitude is a reason and a consequence.





	Bad Sketch Practices

The blank paper stares at him with a dreadful sense of the infinite. It invites anything, everything. The tip of his pen hovers above. It's waiting for the first mark that will decide what will be sketched on it. 

Sean huddles shame-facedly over his journal, back bowed protectively over it. He taps once, twice, indecisive, then hurries into action. The barely visible two dots are soon covered by a whirl of activity, short choppy strokes and sumptious lines. His neck distantly itches. The sun is strong today.

Lately there has been a feeling of excitement in him that sickens him. His artist's eye makes it worse, like this skill of his is betraying him. Day by day he notes the length of his little brother's hair and how it sticks to his nape. The increasing well-shaped scrawniness of his forearms. The delicate deepening skin beneath his eyes. Every boyish movement, even just to sit down on a rock, that goes slow-mo in Sean's head, wanting to be lined page after page in animation. Like the flipbooks he used to make in the corners of his textbooks.

He draws Daniel enough in his journal that anyone looking through it would know that he's fond of him. It's his little brother, after all, and the action poses and expressions are innocent enough. This scrap (the back of a receipt) is something else. Nothing drawn to life (Daniel is old enough to have privacy and he's not some sicko who goes looking) or even overtly sexual; but once he's done you can feel the obsessiveness wafting off it. Reproductions of Daniel's collarbone, the sliver of belly and side of rib when he pulls off his shirt to change, upper thighs when his shorts bunch up, knobby knees pressed together to peer at some interesting new thing. 

Too fucking weird, he mumbles, feeling guilty and exulted as he glances over his work. Something tenses in his belly. Just the hunger, he tells himself, and rips the receipt into a quick handball of paper before tossing it into the stream. Add littering to his offences, why not.

He snaps his journal shut and sits up slow enough to let every bone in his body creak. It's not his fault, he thinks too dimly to even be a reassurance, one of the few times he's even thought about it enough to react to it. He's going a little crazy is all, being alone with just each other so much, and feeling so much more intensely because of it and... everything else. Even before things had gotten this bad Daniel has constantly been on his mind so he could watch over him. It's a (un)natural progression.

Just keep it to scraps. It repeats in his head over and over as he returns to their home together. As he helps him train. As they eat dinner together. As he listens to him bathe in the other room, trying to act natural when they dress and undress around each other. Sleeping side by side, eyes squeezed shut, trying not to hear him breathing and picturing despite himself his soft mouth, fingers itching with the knowledge of how he'd go about drawing it.

Just keep it to scraps, keep it in his head, because the second he stops warning himself might be the instant he slips. He wouldn't want to, but his head has been running so long on the same loop of danieldanieldaniel he's not sure he trusts himself either. 

Of course, that loop is part of the problem; just going stir-crazy is all. Nothing else, no _one_ else throws him off the track for long. It always comes back to this and _just keep it to scraps_ and forced meditative blankness when he can find a second to himself to jerk off because the slightest slack in the leash and he's afraid so _hide it_ _**HIDE IT**_\--

When they run into other people--ones around his own age--it feels like blessed relief. Can't ditch his brother of course but for a moment it's like being in highschool again. Drink, smoke a joint, other people's voices to truly hear, and them hearing him. The dumb jokes and fucking around. Thinking of other eyes and their expressions, interpreting the inflections of someone else's moods. Sketching Cassidy at her guitar. Serenity.

If he and Daniel are more distant than before, all considering, it can only be good and healthy. Old habits die easy. When Daniel starts seeking out Finn for attention, the only reason he is <s>jealous</s> worried is because Sean is still his big brother and these are still basically strangers. That's all.

(that his jealousy might be wanted, and for what reason it may, does not occur to him)


End file.
